In the most terrifying development of capitalism to date, the video game producer Valve is getting ready to release a game next week called 'Active Shooter' on Steam. In the game players can choose to be a SWAT member or a shooter in various situations, including school shooting scenarios. This is despicable and there's no way this game should be allowed to be released.

The idea of the game is gross, for sure. I hate to think of anyone profiting from it, and I hope it gets pulled. But it makes me sad thinking of the number of actual school shootings in America this year that have probably received less negative publicity than this game.

This is going to end up fueling the stupid argument that video games cause mass shootings again, isn't it?

Hanley! wrote:This is going to end up fueling the stupid argument that video games cause mass shootings again, isn't it?

While I have always hated that argument, it's pretty hard to ignore the fact that a game designed and promoted as a simulation of a school shooting would likely have some psychological impact.

Listen, the biggest problem with the debate on how to stop school shootings is that every voice involved focuses on one thing and says this causes school shootings. In reality a dozen (more) things have to go wrong to create a school shooting.

The Legend wrote:Listen, the biggest problem with the debate on how to stop school shootings is that every voice involved focuses on one thing and says this causes school shootings. In reality a dozen (more) things have to go wrong to create a school shooting.

True, though nobody is denying this. People focus on the "one thing" as the other "dozen things" (which I presume are things such as bullying, lack of funding and publicity about mental health, radicalisation, social alienation, amongst others) happen in every country in the developed world, but America is the only country where school shootings regularly happen.

Perhaps then the reason why people only focus on this one thing is because that's what makes America so different to all those other countries, and could be the source of the problem.

The Legend wrote:Listen, the biggest problem with the debate on how to stop school shootings is that every voice involved focuses on one thing and says this causes school shootings. In reality a dozen (more) things have to go wrong to create a school shooting.

True, though nobody is denying this. People focus on the "one thing" as the other "dozen things" (which I presume are things such as bullying, lack of funding and publicity about mental health, radicalisation, social alienation, amongst others) happen in every country in the developed world, but America is the only country where school shootings regularly happen.

Perhaps then the reason why people only focus on this one thing is because that's what makes America so different to all those other countries, and could be the source of the problem.

Except I'm not talking about any one thing when I say one thing. There's people that say it's gun control and only gun control, but there's also people that say it's video games and only video games and people that say it's bullying and only bullying and other people that say it's the handling mental health and only mental health and still others that claim it's home life and only home life. All those people that focus on any one of those things are more wrong than they are right as it takes all of those things going wrong to create a school shooter as well as other things.

Yeah, when people talk about the American school shootings in Europe they always do boil it down to that specific one thing: gun control. It's always gun control over here, because nobody here has a political incentive to claim that it's something else. The problem clearly is gun control, and I think everyone over there knows it too. There are just too many parties over there with a stake in protecting gun rights, or in pushing their own specific agenda.

Those who blame the problem on mental health (Republicans) will cut the mental healthcare budget at every opportunity, so they obviously don't really believe that's the problem. Which isn't to say that none of these shooters have mental health issues, but America doesn't have a more significant mental health problem than countries with lower levels of gun violence. Access to firearms is the more pressing issue.

This Steam video game was horrendous, but I'm almost surprised it's taken this long for that sort of game to appear. People often blame American culture for inspiring these shootings, but the opposite must be more true. The shootings in America are bound to start inspiring the culture. This is just a nasty example of that.